The Tanzlinde of Ostheim
This lime is the thickest of Malsfeld's four guided lindens, 3.34 metres round, and by some distance the shortest, cropped back so hard and so often that it stands just 5 metres tall. What is missing in height it makes up in girth: a hollow, heavily pruned trunk that a 2017 survey still rated vital. It stands on a small sandstone common before Ostheim's church, on ground once used as a court site, the same combination of dance floor and judgment seat that runs through every guided linden in this corner of Hessen. The Elisabethpfad, a pilgrimage route named for the 13th-century Landgravine Elisabeth of Thuringia, passes close by. Ostheim's tree was not on any list until a Wikimedia contributor's survey of the district's surviving guided lindens turned it up alongside its neighbours in Berndshausen, Dagobertshausen and Hilgershausen, all within a few kilometres. Together the four are what is left of a custom that used to be common across the region and now mostly is not.
In bloom
June to July, when it flowers
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Lindenring, in front of the church, Ostheim, Gemeinde Malsfeld, 34323 Hessen, GermanyYou can recognise it as the thickest but shortest of the four, its hollow trunk cropped back to just five metres tall. It stands on the sandstone common before the church in Ostheim.
Free, no permission needed. The tree stands on a small sandstone common before the church, in the middle of the village; the Elisabethpfad pilgrimage route passes nearby.
Rural Hessen, no train station nearby. Melsungen is roughly 10-15 minutes away by car.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
